Retro Review: 'Killer Klowns from Outer Space'
Glowing circus tents, alien klowns, and a UFO made of childhood nightmares? Welcome to the movie that broke my 11-year-old brain…
The year is 1988. The place: the small, all-American town of Crescent Cove. This evening, like many other teenage couples in town, Mike and his girlfriend, Debbie, have made their way to the local make-out spot overlooking the town below. They took Mike’s beat-up car. Look, he even brought champagne. How romantic…
Suddenly, a bright, pinkish-red glow streaks overhead and crashes in the nearby woods. What is it? Mike's (played by a 26-year-old Grant Cramer) focus abruptly shifts from romance to curiosity. He decides to investigate, dragging Debbie (a 25-year-old Suzanne Snyder) with him. Because, of course, he does.
Heading into the woods, the pair stumbles upon a strange sight: a large circus tent bathed in an otherworldly pinkish-red glow. And, being the foolish twenty-somethings playing teenagers that they are (it was a thing back then), Mike and Debbie head inside. What they find is out of this world, quite literally: strange lights, weird contraptions, bottomless pits, and arcing energy. A strange circus, to be sure. And there is something alive in here. Something inhuman. Klowns!
Yes, that’s Klowns with a K. They’re not your average clowns.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I revisit this cult classic once in a while, as it terrified me to the point of having nightmares for months after I first watched it back in the late 80s. It’s a film I have a strong love/hate relationship with, and seeing the massive footprint it made in the sci-fi cult film genre, I’m not the only one.
On one hand, it’s a stroke of genius: a shameless, low-budget sci-fi comedy with humor as black as pitch, a film that screams “It’s the 80s!” with a voice that has echoed through the decades. On the other hand, it digs its garish klown-claws deep into our most primal childhood fears. It weaponizes the familiar figure of a clown with such a ruthless and sinister glee that it could make Pennywise and Art the Clown sit up and take notes, arguably helping to perfect the evil clown subgenre of horror.
And I was the perfect target. By the time I watched it at age 11 or 12, I already came pre-equipped with an irrational, deep-seated fear of both clowns and UFOs. At a time when I could handle any Freddy, Jason, or Xenomorph the horror genre threw at me, Killer Klowns from Outer Space was a low blow. It felt like a cocktail of fear tailor-made just for me, and it would haunt me for months, if not years.
The Klowns are Coming!
Trying to describe the plot of Killer Klowns from Outer Space is almost pointless. The film is less a traditional narrative and more a series of clown-themed sci-fi gags, essentially a highlight reel of alien Klowns terrorizing Crescent Cove in various inventive and circus-themed ways, all set to a terrific score by John Massari and an iconic theme song by punk rockers The Dickies.
But let’s make an attempt anyway. If you haven’t watched this 1988 cult classic yet, I have two things to say: Spoiler alert! And also, what are you waiting for? It’s bound to be on streaming somewhere.
So, Mike and Debbie discover a massive, glowing circus tent in the middle of the forest, which turns out to be a landed UFO. And as everyone knows, you can't have a circus without clowns. But since this particular big top is from, let's say, way out of town, the clowns—ehm, Klowns—are a special kind of strange.
After a close encounter of the circus kind, Mike and Debbie are on the run. It turns out these Klowns are huge, bestial, clown-like aliens, complete with white makeup, red noses, sharp teeth, and crazy hair. And they hunger for human flesh, which they intend to hunt using a wide assortment of themed weapons and tricks: shotguns that shoot popcorn-like larvae, cotton candy rayguns that cocoon humans for later consumption, acid pies, and weapons that capture people inside giant balloons. The list goes on.
As mentioned, the story is simple enough, and not at all the film's focus. Having escaped the Klowns, Mike and Debbie try to warn the town, but the Klowns are hot on their heels, killing or capturing anyone they come across until they stage a full-scale invasion of Crescent Cove. Of course, even as the carnage goes on right outside his door, the old and exceedingly grumpy Sheriff Curtis Mooney (played by the legendary John Vernon) refuses to believe those “damn kids and their pranks” until he is made into a Klown hand-puppet!
It’s now up to Mike and Debbie, along with the heroic police officer Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson) and with unlikely help from the Terenzi brothers (Peter Licassi and Michael Siegel), a pair of ice cream truck drivers, to save the day. Their mission: warn people before everyone ends up as Klown-food.
But when Debbie is kidnapped by Klowns for God knows what purpose—whisked away in a giant, floating balloon tied to the back of a Klown car, it’s up to our heroes to save the day. Armed with the crucial knowledge that a Klown’s only weak spot is its red nose, they must head back into the nightmare circus to rescue her and face down the biggest Klown of them all: Jojo the Klownzilla (played by Charles Chiodo).
The Chiodo Brothers
Much like the story, analyzing the acting or directing in Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a bit of a pointless exercise. This is a film by the Chiodo Brothers, who are special effects maestros first and foremost. Their expertise lies in makeup, puppetry, and practical effects, and their impressive résumé includes iconic work on films like Elf (2003), Team America (2004), the Critters franchise, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), and Ernest Scared Stupid (1991), not to mention several “claymation” sequences for The Simpsons.
Despite the small budget, the Chiodo Brothers' love for practical effects is on full display. The excellent makeup and animatronics punch far above their weight, achieving a quality you would expect from 80s films with many times its budget. These elements combine to create the unforgettable Klowns that would haunt kids’ nightmares around the world.
The Chiodo Brothers never made another feature film after Killer Klowns from Outer Space, preferring to stay in their lane of special effects and puppetry. Still, talk of a sequel to the cult classic has persisted for years, though these rumors have never materialized into anything more than rumors and the occasional internet headline.
However, the cultural impact is still felt, with Klown cosplay commonly seen at conventions. And in 2024, a video game based on the film was released, pitting two teams — Humans vs. Klowns — against each other to either prevent or bring about the dreaded Klownpocalypse!
The Fear of Klowns
There’s a word for the fear of clowns: coulrophobia. Interestingly, the term originally described an irrational “fear of people walking on stilts” but is now almost exclusively used to describe a fear of clowns. This is a fear rooted in genuine psychological reasons, and it's only increasing, likely due to their growing presence in pop culture's horror genre. With studies showing that more than 50% of people have a fear of clowns to some degree—and 5% admitting to an “extreme fear”—it's no wonder these colorful circus performers continue to haunt our screens and our nightmares.
But this always led me to a question: why didn't other clown horror movies scare me in the same way? Why didn't Pennywise from Stephen King's IT (perhaps my favorite of his novels) have the same visceral effect, even with Tim Curry's brilliant portrayal in the 1990 miniseries? I love that story—and the later cinematic versions of 2017 and 2019—but it's a different beast entirely, playing on deeper childhood fears and cosmic horror in a way that Killer Klowns from Outer Space simply doesn't.
Maybe it was their inhumanity, their sheer alienness. And the fact that they never talk. At least not any language we can understand. That quality tapped into my childhood fear of UFO abductions, creating a perfect balance of terror that Pennywise, brilliant as he was, never quite matched. Different beasts, indeed.
The Final Gag
So, will there ever be a sequel to the hilariously dreaded Killer Klowns from Outer Space? The cultural impact certainly hasn't faded. I'm reminded of an interview with the Chiodo Brothers decades after the film's release, where the trio sat down and opened the conversation with a simple admission: “Okay, it was us.” Apparently, I’m far from the only one who was emotionally scarred by this film.
But if a sequel ever does materialize, this time, I’ll be ready.
An all time classic! A friend and I used to be obsessed with this movie in high school.